My understanding is that some of the newer cars from American manufacturers have seen an improvement in quality. Still, my honda has 282,000 miles on it with no significant work; I consider this the benchmark for all other cars.

I have a '95 ford aerostar with 210,000+ miles on it, doesn't miss, knock, or burn a drop of oil, just needs a bit of transmission work to fix a small leak and, best of all, it has plenty of room to haul bikes and suchlike around.

Some leading consumer mags have said that the American car companies are catching up to the Japanese---but the perception of quality is still won by the people at Honda. I must admit that Honda engines seem to last forever--my brother had to be told by his wife to get rid of the Accord as it had over 300,000 miles on it...

I have a Ford F-150 and it has been really sound for the first 90,000 miles (knock on wood.)

Generally speaking, American car companies are catching up, but not quickly enoough.

My understanding is that some of the newer cars from American manufacturers have seen an improvement in quality. Still, my honda has 282,000 miles on it with no significant work; I consider this the benchmark for all other cars.

He'd put 750,000kms on it over 10 years and the only thing to ever go wrong was radiator leak. True story.

Put over 325,000 miles on my BMW Bavaria. No major repairs.

Worst of all, worse than even my MGB was a Peugeot 505 I had in college. What a POS. Most fun was the cruise control. It loved to self activate and then accelerate. You had to jam on the breaks and turn the car off to deactivate it. French engineering, woohoo.

Worst of all, worse than even my MGB was a Peugeot 505 I had in college. What a POS. Most fun was the cruise control. It loved to self activate and then accelerate. You had to jam on the breaks and turn the car off to deactivate it. French engineering, woohoo.

The good news is that if you weren't fast enough in deactivating the cruise control, the whole thing would burst into flames sooner or later anyhow.

The good news is that if you weren't fast enough in deactivating the cruise control, the whole thing would burst into flames sooner or later anyhow.

I junked the car after the driver's side rear door started spontaneously opening; which it did when I was backing out of the garage. After that the back door and the garage door were never able to be shut again.

I dread the new line of compact cars domestic automakers will be putting out as gas prices climb. For the most part, US automakers think they can sell SUVs indefinitely, so being caught by surprise, they will either slap together something (think the AMC Gremlin) and try selling it, or beg some foreign auto maker (this time around, I would guess Chery or Hengtong Huatai) to make small cars that they can rebadge and call under their name. Perhaps they may do a small car line like what Chevy did with Geo, sell small cars under it.

Of course, other automakers will have moved completely to hybrid or electric cars that use a gasoline or diesel engine to charge the batteries as opposed to direct propulsion, and be getting 75-100 MPG without adverse handling.

Maybe it might be different this time. We'll see how well or badly Chevy does if/when they get the Volt into production. If its as good as the EV1 or the Aptera, much less the Tesla, they might just have saved the domestic auto industry.

I remember in 2006 that one of the big 3 was going to remarket Chery stuff here in the US by '08, but apparently that hasn't happend yet. I'm almost 100% sure that in a year or two, there will be vehicles on the dealer lots here directly from China. Heck, it seems like all the parts come from there, why not save time and have them assembled while they are at it.

Chery has come a long way. I remember the issue with the old QQ model that was "reverse engineered", but they have advanced (from what I've read) 20-30 years worth of automotive advances in 2-3 years, and are on par with any other auto maker in the world for basic transportation.

You couldn't prove it by me. My 1999 Mazda B2500 (a rebadged Ford Ranger) has 128,000 miles and runs beatifully with no major repairs having been done to it. I will buy another one when this one gives up the ghost.